Ask a Beta Tester: More on phasing and starter zones

Welcome back to Ask a Beta Tester on this Maintenance Day Tuesday. Let's get started right away with webrunner's question...

Have you seen any interesting/fun usable gear with cool procs or use abilities, or is it just stats, stats, stats till the Tauren come home?

There are plenty of trinkets with this sort of thing, but not weapons or robes or anything like that. Trinkets are much more common as quest rewards in Wrath than they were before, and you get a pretty wide range of effects. On weapons, it's all stats of various flavors.

Rodrigo asked...

Are there any mounts summonable like the Magic Broom of the Headless horseman? Instant summon is just too delicious... I'll miss mine in 2 days...

Nope. Sorry!

The Hammer asked...

As an RPer, I'll be looking forward to hosting events within Northrend, and within the other places in the game. I am worried, however, about this phasing technology. A lot of my events are situational, and rely on everyone being on the same "page", as it were. So, my question is, far from being a gift to the RP community, is the expansion and its phasing going to damage these events? By explanation, will an attack on a Scourge-controlled town fall apart when most attendees have already seen the Scourge off, in their phasing version? Or does it not work like that?

It depends on where you host it. The entire game world isn't changed by phasing, just certain sections of it. Icecrown is one place where they use a massive amount of it, because the zone is a story, more or less. Other zones don't see nearly as much of it. I don't have a list I can give you of all the places it is used, but you'll be able to find places for your events. Heck, if you can get people to the same phased step together, you might even have some fun with it. I could see making an event out of the final group quest in a certain chain in Icecrown. I won't spoil what the chain is, but the 5-man group quest that pops up will be a nice hint.

Fojar asked a pair of questions...

If I want to get the maximum awesome-lore experience, would you recommend leveling my Alliance toons or my Horde toons first?

Both sides have great stories in Wrath. Anybody who says Alliance is favored or Horde is favored is nuts. Which faction do you like better? The Horde has the Forsaken out for vengeance, or Saurfang struggling to keep things together with Hellscream romping about. The Alliance has origin stories, and a healthy helping of vengeance there as well. Both factions are awesome, and I don't think one needs to come before the other. Just pick whichever.

And also, have you noticed any significant bugs or problems with the phasing system?

There were some weird bugs during the beta but they've been smoothed out. Bugs such as an area rolling over to the next phase because one quest triggered it, but you had other quests to do in that area that you can't finish anymore. They don't phase early anymore.

In another case, I had a quest to get a few drops from some mobs, and while those mobs existed in my current phase, they were different from the ones I was supposed to kill in the previous phase. So I killed them for an eternity without the drops until I realized I was supposed to do it earlier. That was a bug, and has now been fixed and I have the quest done. I think all of these kinds of bugs have been fixed for launch.

Joe asked...

How should we approach mounts and riding skills as we go into WotLK? If we can afford our epic flyer and training, should we go ahead and do it?

Are there faster mounts in WotLK that require new training?

It's up to you if you want to train epic flying now or not. You won't be able to use it until at least level 77, but buying it now means you already have it and you won't be tempted to spend the money on random junk on the AH as you level. Having epic flying in Northrend is really, really nice, especially if you're questing in Icecrown or Storm Peaks. Just keep in mind you'll need an extra 1000g (roughly) at level 77 for Cold Weather Flying. There aren't faster mounts as far as new training, but you do need Cold Weather Flying to fly in Northrend at all.

Omestes asked... Is this like TBC, where I can comfortably level in Northrend at 68?

Yes.

Nick S asked...

Are there quests chains involving trips into Utgarde Keep in both starting zones, i.e. if you want to clear all the Utgarde Keep quests will you need to run quests in both starting zones to get the (Dungeon) quests?

The two starting zones each have an instance cluster of their own. The Borean Tundra has the Nexus, the Howling Fjord has Utgarde Keep. You'll only get quests for the local dungeons in each starting zone.

The Wrath of the Lich King beta is in full swing, and the WoW Insider crew is here to sate your curiosity with Ask a Beta Tester! Leave your beta questions in the comments and we'll do our best to answer 'em!